Schindler Group

are a global leader in elevator and escalator manufacturing, transporting more than 1.5 billion of us up and down buildings and across transportation hubs every day.

The Brief

Merge two distinctive elevator apps, myPORT and ElevateMe, into a single mobile app, streamlining the user experience.

The new app aims to integrate the unique features of both apps, providing a comprehensive and personalised user experience.

Immersion

To gain a thorough understanding of the layout of both apps, we conducted an Information Architecture exercise. Subsequently, we mapped out the main features in a user flow. These two tasks helped identify which aspects of the app were to be merged and which features would remain separate.

User Personas

Defining the app's user groups is crucial since available features depend on the user's role. Each user group will encounter a distinct version of the app. Our task was to visualize how these variations would appear, ensuring consistency and intuitiveness across the changing interface. For instance, a user might use the elevator app as a guest in one building and as a tenant in another.

Our goal was to enable a seamless experience for such dynamic app usage.

For Guests

  • Elevator Calls to floors available to the public. No account, no login.

For Tenants

  • Seamless Experience with full featured functionality dedicated access rights to restricted areas.

For Visitors

  • Digital, app-less Visitors Pass with temporary access rights to access the building and enjoying a Seamless Journey

User Journey

To adopt a user-centric perspective, we developed a user journey chart. This chart mapped out various user types across different buildings, emphasizing their needs, benefits, and touch points. The journey chart provided a comprehensive view of a tenant's (a regular user with an account) typical day, outlining interactions with elevators, from leaving home to accessing the office, and finally entering a public space as a guest

  1. Intent: Go from floor 8 to 0

  2. User Type: Tenant, Guest, Visitor

  3. System Touch Point: Mobile App, Port Terminal, Access Card

  4. User Need: No waiting time, secure access

  5. Benefit: Elevator knows users routine, effortless journey

Ideation

We initiated the process with multiple card sorting exercises, brainstorming and ideating numerous variations of the app's layout. After thorough discussions, we settled on three versions to be taken forward for wireframing.

Version 1: App with no home screen
Version 2: App with a dynamic smart home screen
Version 3: App with a static home screen

We are competing against users
pushing an elevator button over using an app.

That’s tough competition !

Deliverables

The project brief called for exploration, and the final deliverables consisted of a series of prototypes illustrating the user journey for various user personas. We presented three variations along with our well-informed recommendations on which prototype to proceed with.

Reflection

  • Usability testing was absent from the process despite our efforts to persuade the client to allocate time and budget for it during the project. Upon project completion and handover, we once more strongly recommended that the client conduct usability tests before proceeding with further app development. I feel it is vital part of the apps succession.

  • As a team, we should have invested more time in immersion. In some instances, even weeks into the project, it felt like we were still onboarding ourselves, which impacted the overall workflow.

  • Different stakeholders occasionally led to varying scopes, making it challenging to gauge progress as the scope fluctuated. Our task was to maintain a focus on the bigger picture and back-up our ideas with solid reasoning.